hard drive gone :(

Foggy · Post by **Foggy** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 9:14 am

bloody hard drive gone on my 2nd pc ,wont boot and clicking like hell ,luckily its only got music on it
oh well more expense

just been looking at pc world ..400 gig sata 39 quid
could probbaly get cheaper but need pretty quick so not a bad price

SouthernDave · Post by **SouthernDave** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 11:31 am

Not abd price....is your old one backed up? I got a Western Digital portable HDD to back everything up to once a month, good investment.

Also when my last PC died, I managed to get all the files recovered at a local PC shop for £30......

Foggy · Post by **Foggy** » Sun Dec 14, 2008 1:31 pm

no big deal ,only use it for media stuff ,just got to reload xp

rs232 · Post by **rs232** » Fri Dec 19, 2008 10:20 am

If you're in a mood you can try buying the same model somewherelese (ebay?) replacinf the electronic of the old on with the new one.
Apparently it seems to be working.

Even if it still clicking but you can see it from the BIOS, give it a go with HDD-regenerator (it's available inside the Hiren's boot CD)

Cheers

mailee · Post by **mailee** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:23 pm

Count yourself lucky Foggy, I recently lost my hard drive and motherboard and lost the lot. Most of my WIP photos and plans were on the drive. I now have a new computer and a spare portable hard drive which I back up onto.

Bludall · Post by **Bludall** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:29 pm

My hard drive makes a funny noise, is that a sign that it'll be going to hard drive heaven soon?

DIY_Johnny · Post by **DIY_Johnny** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:36 pm

mailee wrote:Count yourself lucky Foggy, I recently lost my hard drive and motherboard and lost the lot. Most of my WIP photos and plans were on the drive. I now have a new computer and a spare portable hard drive which I back up onto.

You should be able to get most of the data back mailee

Hoovie · Post by **Hoovie** » Mon Dec 22, 2008 11:38 pm

Bludall wrote:My hard drive makes a funny noise, is that a sign that it'll be going to hard drive heaven soon?

Never a good sign!

copy anything you don't want to/cannot afford to lose to a memory stick, or CD or some other device.
if you have not got anything, email the files to yourself on a yahoo or google account and you will have an internet backup.

scot-canuck · Post by **scot-canuck** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 12:30 am

Another trick, for dying hard drives.
Stick them in a sealed bag in the freezer over night (there is a reason)
cold makes the insides shrink a little thus resulting in bearings that dont shriek, will prob buy about 5 to 10 mins before it warms up and it starts screeching again.
Doesnt always work, but if desperate and drive wont appear when warm, its worth a try

I would concur with backups...sadly despite being an IT specialist... I'm as bad as everyone else about remembering about backups

Useful util is a prog called Speedfan, monitors system temps, fan speeds and can usually give a report on health of hard drives (doesnt always work though)

Stoday · Post by **Stoday** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 7:58 pm

I've used a RAID configuration for some years now. Hard drives are so cheap it's a good option.

My latest machine has three 500G drives, two in RAID 1 (i.e. mirror) and a hot spare. One did fail after 3 weeks and the Intel software automatically rebuilt the array using the spare. Took 4 hours though.

scot-canuck · Post by **scot-canuck** » Tue Dec 23, 2008 10:54 pm

only problem with using RAID for backups is it can sometimes mirror bad data into the RAID array (have a buddy who has to tell clients that has happened on ocassion, then discover they have no backups - yeah not fun for him to explain that one to them)